Invasive Species and Their Impact on Our Community

This morning was refreshingly cool for Texas, and we took advantage of it by weeding out Hermann Park (the park just across from the Zoo), while it was still cool. Our volunteer coordinator had told us we needed to help vanquish the invasive species from their park by weeding some, cutting the seeds of others, and simply cutting others.

Hermann Park is a park known for it's beautiful lands, and like many other parks it is owned by the city, and kept up by a non-profit organization. The organization is paid very little and what they do to keep the grounds clean and native is mostly done by volunteers. The other amenities of the park, like the nice benches and bridges are either donations or improvements made by the parks annual income plus fundraising. The park works to try to keep a friendly environment for Houstonians and their children, and keep the landscape beautiful by maintaining the native species and eliminating invasives. Most of the invasives proliferate very quickly and are very hard to control. Some of the weeds we fought were cattails, which grow very quickly and reproduce even faster.

Most of the morning was spend weeding a part of the garden, but then we got into the fun part with the gardener. He told us to find a certain kind of plant and then cut off the tops of it so it couldn't reproduce. that was actually quite fun. But the even more fun part was chopping down the cattails, the very tall grasses that usually grow in ponds, at the end of the biofilter. That was fun because you felt like you were in a forest, and you were just chopping down grasses so you could build a path. I thought it was fun because it was somewhat destructive, so yeah, conservation pretty much encompasses everything, haha.

After that we went on a tour of the park. Our volunteer director showed us how the park had grown in the last few years and how family friendly it had become. It was an enormous park, full of grass, and ducks and various paths and even play structures. She told us that her great-grandparents actually helped start the park (along with Herman, the guy a lot of the city is named after), and they build a nursery for trees because they wanted shade in the hot parts of Houston. What's interesting is that that act was actually destructive to the natural environment of Houston, the prairie. In the prairie, trees barely existed, it was just tall grasses with immense roots that filtered the soil well. Trees roots were far to enormous to make the soil healthy like the prairie did, and they took away some resources from the surrounding grasses. It's actually funny because a lot of people believe that if they just plant a tree, they are helping save the environment, but that's not always the case, especially in an ecosystem that isn't used to such big plant life.

And as we wandered through the park we noticed a lot of things that were bad for the overall ecosystem that are simple misconceptions in the public. Like feeding the animals. That's bad for them because it creates begging behavior and then they don't rely on their surroundings for food but people, and some even get aggressive when they don't get what they want. Take for example, nutria. Most people know that nutria are an invasive species and are nasty creatures that you don't want to mess with. But have you ever seen a nutria in the wild? It looks like an otter, or a beaver, but with a long rat tail and nasty buck teeth. Someone compared it to a large rat. But on the surface, they seem harmless. Which is probably why we encountered an old man feeding them. When our director went up to him to tell him that they were dangerous, he didn't listen. Every time she turned around, he would keep feeding it.  It was difficult for us to see because we knew these creatures had a negative impact on the environment (they'll basically eat anything and end up killing all the vegetation), and this old man was helping it survive and even promoting the begging behavior which might be dangerous for people or children down the road who don't end up feeding it.

It was an interesting lesson, because you have to think about your impact on the environment before you try to help it. Even the best intentions end up failing because of poor planning or lack of knowledge. Something simple like not putting a plant in the environment that will help it proliferate is an example of an attempt to help, but unnecessary failure due to lack of knowledge. Our group became very attached to this park, and were very passionate about these issues because its a fairly simple solution. We thought putting up signs to educate the public about these invasive species, and what they can do to help, would be important toward furthering the park's success and health in the future. We came up with an idea that were were passionate about, that was plausible, and that most everyone liked. It was exciting because we could actually see this plan coming through and helping the community of the zoo and the greater Houston area.

Altogether it was a wonderful day, we learned a lot, and we accomplished a lot, just in a small time period. It's really great when you can look back and see how much work you did in a day, even if it's small compared to the entire project.


(This blog was written as if it were Thursday, May 24, 2012)